How to help bicyclists #1: don't do us any special favours

March 24, 2009

Let us suppose that you are a well meaning driver who wants to help out
bicyclists, but you don't bicycle yourself (or at least not anywhere
where you're sharing the road with cars) so you don't have direct
experience to draw on. So, what can you do to help?

Paradoxically, one of the best things that you can do to help is to
not do us bicyclists any special favours; to treat bicyclists just
as you would any other vehicle (which is what they legally are, at
least here in Ontario).

The problem with doing bicyclists special favours is that it makes you
unpredictable, and bicyclists really want cars to be predictable. When a
car deviates from what we expect and what it should do, we have no idea
what it's going to do next; we have to slow down and assume the worst,
not because we think you're malicious but because we just don't know
what's going on.

The corollary to this is that if you do want to do a bicyclist a favour,
such as letting them turn left in front of you, it will help a lot if
you do something obvious to signal that you're doing it deliberately.
This converts your unpredictable behavior (inexplicably slowing down,
for example) into predictable behavior; ah, you're generously letting
them turn.

(PS: please don't be offended if the bicyclist doesn't give you much
acknowledgement of such things. Generally the best I can do is to give
you a brief thumbs up in thanks, because I am otherwise too busy with
the mechanics of signaling, turning, and so on.)